This reads as a very deeply-felt, intensely personal memoir of a white boy, innocent of hatred, living in a black neighborhood in 1960s Jackson, MIssissippi. When I say innocent of hatred, I don't mean to say that anything is clear-cut. As the author describes, bad deeds draw everybody down and no one is innocent.

But its also a comic tale and the comedy dissociates and dispels the intensity. Everything in the book is all at once completely improbable and absolutely believable (well, almost everything). Its manner of describing the South and its people is almost uncannily true and wide-ranging.

I read this book on a recommendation from the Deep South group. And boy am I glad I picked this book up.Weighing in at just over 200 pages it's not a daunting read at all. And the characters and place descriptions grab you from the get go, or gitgo as Jack Butler may have penned it.The story takes place in Missippi back in the race-focused 1960's. It centers around a young white man doing his own thing in a colored part of town. His thing happens to Jujitsu and he starts a club that uses Jujitsu to help one come closer to Jesus.The language throughout the whole book is spot on! Some folks are filled with the "Holy Spurt" and those that aren't may just get called "werfless".There are a few sex scenes that were a bit graphic for me. I see how they were needed for the characters to develop, but some of the descriptions were a bit distracting and could have been handled differently. But I also know this has more to do with personal taste than Butler's ability as a story teller.And that's exactly what this is, southern story telling at its best.There are parts that will have laughing outloud, parts that'll have you so mad you could spit and a part that paints the hottest summer I've ever experienced!This book is highly recommended. ( )

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Jack Butler's Jujitsu for Christ--originally published in 1986--follows the adventures of Roger Wing, a white born-again Christian and karate instructor who opens a martial arts studio in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, during the tensest years of the Civil Rights era. Ambivalent about his religion and his region, he befriends the Gandys, an African-American family--parents A.L. and Snower Mae, teenaged son T.J., daughter Eleanor Roosevelt, and youngest son Marcus--who has moved to Jackson from the Delta in hopes of greater opportunity for their children. As the political heat ris… (more)